


Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror

by concretebrush



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief mentions of past trauma, F/M, Fluff and Smut, One-Sided Amane Misa/Yagami Light, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Smart Amane Misa, but don't worry she gets with L who will love and respect her, heavy on character development and healing, i am lazy and not super interested in doing too much research into actual death note details, if you spot a mistake let me know i will fix it, light on plot, right now there's no smut but patience we will earn our E rating, some angst to make the eventual tooth-rotting fluff sweeter!!, some brief mentions of past incidents of sexual harrassment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:07:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concretebrush/pseuds/concretebrush
Summary: “I could actually fall for you.”“Let’s not go that far. But you could maybe be a friend of mine. Would that be okay?”“Yes. So now I’ve gained yet another friend.”***All that is to say, having L around makes it a lot easier to breathe. Misa’s pretty sure not many people can say that about L.
Relationships: Amane Misa/L
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Sometime in the period while Light and L are handcuffed.**

L’s focus is absolute. It’s a necessity of being all three of the world’s top detectives rolled into one. But it’s also something inextricably him. It often sends a shiver of panic through Misa. When L turns his focus on you, well...it’s excoriating. Like hydrofluoric acid. Like when she had to shoot a scene during noon out in an Arizona desert. She had forgotten to reapply her sunscreen after the third take and came home the raw pink of a newborn baby. Every inch of her had hurt to the touch.

Misa doesn’t _like_ that L is handcuffed to Light. Obviously. But she will say that it really has made things easier. She’s not an idiot, no matter what middle aged men think. She was first in her class all through high school, she just isn’t as meticulous as L or Light. Is that a crime? It sounds exhausting being either of them. So yeah, she knows that Light doesn’t love her, thank you. She knows that her feelings for Light are twisted up and distorted by the pedestal she’s put him on, by the pangs of grief over her parents that still hits her most nights, by the emptiness that comes with being the most beautiful woman in the room and turning that into currency. In her most self-reflective moments, she knows it’s because Light is the only man who won’t ever fall at her feet.

She knows that Light thinks she’s stupid and annoying and clingy. But Misa lost her shame many years and many, many degrading comments ago. “Shut up and smile.” “She’s useless but she’s pretty.” “Hey girl, come over here and climb into my lap. I’ll _really_ give you something to scream about.” The dumb blonde, ditzy, worthless except as a piece of meat. She knows what men think of her. She’s learned to have an iron exterior and lean into it. Give them what they came for. They think they know her already, just by looking at her face (or boobs, or butt). These same men fund her lace hobby and colored lens collection, so be it. Life is like that. When she lets herself really think about it, she knows Light is like that. But at least she knows he won’t ever truly want to get to know her, see everything inside that is rotten and broken and ugly. She had seen a quote once, “if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” She cried afterwards because she knew that trade was much too expensive. Sometimes the vastness of this preemptive loss keeps her awake. 

All that is to say, having L around makes it a lot easier to breathe. Misa’s pretty sure not many people can say that about L.

“What do you two talk about on your actual dates? When I’m here, it’s either Misa and I talking or Light and I talking.” L says this while investigating yet another dessert. If Misa is right, it looks to be some kind of opera cake. She idly wonders if he has lived in France. And if he has diabetes. And if he doesn’t have diabetes, _how_ does he not have diabetes? Billionaire-only medication? Billionaire-only sugar??

“Light and I have lots to talk about! I’m his girlfriend you know.” She rattles off the rote answer, gazing in fascination at the way L eats food, like everything is to be deeply savored. Like it’s his last time. 

“I see.” When he glances up at her, their eyes lock for an interminable stretch. He clearly doesn’t understand that staring at someone is rude, and eventually she concedes the contest, flushing slightly, and slides her gaze to Light.

Light’s arms are crossed and his head is limp against the back of the couch, staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

“Light! What do you want to talk about?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Liiiiiight. Oh I know! We can watch a movie,” Misa brightens up at the idea. That’s safe. L won’t be able to point out any uncomfortable truths if he can’t talk and even _he_ must know not to talk during a movie, right?

“Hm, there’s actually a theater on the 4th floor.”

“Ryuzaki, you’re the best! Let’s watch a rom-com?”

“How fun. I can sit in the middle,” L mutters into his cake.

Misa ignores this.

“There’s a really cute rom-com that just came out last month. I haven’t had a chance to watch it but my actress friend is in it and I promised her I would see it and let her know what I think...” she trails off and glances at L.

“We have access to whatever movie you would like.” 

Sometimes, L is really great.

“Yay!” She jumps up and grabs Light’s limp hand, pulling him with all her might. He mutters but gets up eventually, and Misa wraps both arms around his bicep and drags him to the door. L must trail behind them, tethered as they are, but Misa doesn’t turn around to look.

***

The Kira case has slowed down significantly. Without any new leads, L and Light are both getting a little antsy and depressed. But for Misa, it really feels like a vacation some days. 

She has her own penthouse floor (she’s still not sure why L didn’t take that for himself and Light), access to an in-building gym that looks like the downtown LA Equinox, what tastes like Michelin starred room service, and a Benz and driver for her own personal use (sure, everything is bugged and she’s always followed by L’s goons but she doesn’t have anything to hide). Her days involve swimming in the pool on the ground floor, eating breakfast while chatting with the taskforce members, maybe going to a shoot, coming back for lunch with her boys and then hanging out with them or going shopping or going to another shoot or working out if she feels like it. 

She doesn’t know when she began thinking of L and Light as her boys, but it feels right. She wasn’t being facetious when she told L that he “could maybe be a friend of mine.” She likes him. He’s sarcastic and childish and prickly and God the absolute weirdest. In fact, she thinks they’ve tacitly developed a little game. L is sarcastic and sometimes Misa pretends outrage at his comments and sometimes she goes along with them and pretends to miss the sarcasm and sometimes she ignores them. He smiles a little when he guesses her reaction correctly. Look, Light _really_ doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to her okay? She needs to entertain herself somehow.

She’s picking at her scallops, gazing out of floor to ceiling windows at skyscrapers jutting into blue sky and daydreaming about the lacy black dress with straps and buckles she saw in a NYFW photo when L pokes a fork into her field of vision.

“Light and I have been playing cards at night and I was wondering if you wanted to join?”

She jolts a little in surprise, “Oh definitely! Anything to spend more time with Light.”

L gives her an even look at that response. He really is too observant for his own good.

“We start at eight and go until ten usually.”

“Sounds good!”

“Guess we can’t play gin rummy anymore,” Light says ruefully.

“I’ll teach you two Pinochle if you don’t already know it,” L says, “or we can do something else. It’s good to have mental rest periods like this, anyway.”

L probably still has ulterior motives for getting them together like that, maybe hoping something will slip that’ll incriminate either of them but Misa is too grateful for the prospect of some quality time with people who aren’t sycophantic fans or hard-assed managers to care.

When Misa shows up at eight on the dot, Light is on the couch watching some news channel and L is sitting on the floor shuffling cards.

L is a patient teacher, something Misa is not surprised to discover. She likes playing with the two of them, though they are both more competitive than she is and care _a lot_ about besting the other. At the end of the first game, they pull out a notepad with a very complicated scorekeeping framework for things from card games to push up counts to reading speed that apparently accounts for things like ambient temperature and estimated blood glucose levels. She spends a good ten minutes making fun of both of them for that.

Misa loses frequently, but she chalks that up to the boys’ ridiculous and borderline concerning competitiveness. Light says he’s glad she’s there so she can be a “buffer,” whatever that means, and L shoots back that “you’re just glad she’s here so you can come in ‘second’ instead of last,” with full-on air quotes, which then devolves into an argument about who _actually_ comes in first most often where a truly incredible amount of evidence is procured.

They fall into a routine.

Early May hits and Misa jerks awake in bed on a balmy night, shaking and sweating. The clock reads 1:12 AM, and even though she hasn’t looked at a calendar in the last few days she knows exactly what today is. It’s been four years on the dot since she watched her parents get murdered. At 1:45 the tremors still have not stopped and she resigns herself to her fate. She needs to find some human contact which has always been the only way she has gotten through the night with a shred of peace. She’s hopeful that Light is awake. Light doesn’t love her but she thinks he at least has enough chivalry to hold her for a bit.

Misa takes the elevator down and wanders into their sleeping area. The two of them sleep on one giant Alaskan King, with the handcuff links stretched almost taut across the middle. Well, only Light is asleep, L with his hands clasped on his stomach and staring up at the ceiling, looks a little like an open-eyed corpse ready for a viewing. Presented with this particular tableau, Misa is beginning to understand why L has such enormous under-eye bags at all times. He’s on the side closest to the door and tilts his head at her as she takes a silent step past the entrance.

“Sorry, I can’t sleep. I had hoped Light would be awake. I just...wanted someone to hold me for a bit,” Misa whispers, twisting her fingers together.

L looks at her for a brief moment before laying his head back down, “Light went to sleep at 12:10AM. He’s in a deep sleep stage right now.”

Misa glances down at the rug, “Oh...” and she’s about to head back to her room for a long night when L murmurs something she almost doesn’t catch, “I can.”

“What?”

L clears his throat a little, still not looking at her, “I can hold you if you want. Since we’re friends and all. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

Misa is doubtful that lanky, skinny, L is going to be comfortable to hug horizontally, but she is not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Thank you, Ryuzaki.”

Stellar detective that he is, she knows that he knows the significance of today.

When she climbs into the bed and hovers above him uncertainly, he curls one arm around her waist and gently pulls her to rest on his chest. After a moment, his other hand strokes her hair in soothing waves. L is a surprisingly excellent cuddler, but before she even manages to finish that thought, Misa is sound asleep.

“Wake up, Misa. I don’t think you want Light to see us like this.”

Misa grumpily raises her head, pulled from a very restful slumber. Slowly the grogginess fades. The first rays of sunlight fan out over the tops of neighboring buildings, brightening by degrees, this unfamiliar room, where she is curled on top of a contextually-unfamiliar person.

L gazes down at her with an unreadable expression. The hands resting lightly on her back sink down to his sides.

“Oh. Thanks, yeah I’ll just-” she quickly crawls off him and slithers down to the floor, “be going then.”

L is no longer looking at her, back in position with his hands clasped on his stomach gazing at the ceiling. The golden light of sunrise limns his pale face with life.

Misa creeps out the door just as Light begins to make waking-up noises.

They never talk about that night but afterwards, something clicks into place between them, or maybe falls away, like molted skin.


	2. Chapter 2

“Light! Can I practice on you?” Misa flies into the boys’ living area with a handful of palettes and brushes and a large make-up bag tucked under her arm. 

  


“Practice what?” asks Light, who’s tapping away on a L-provisioned laptop. L is sitting across the table with a notebook open but relegated off to the side while he stacks sugar cubes into what appears to be the foundations of an elaborate castle, complete with a moat.

  


“For my new movie role I have to be a hairstylist and makeup artist—it’s a romance between a poor makeup artist/stylist and a famous actor—and I’m the female lead, so the director wanted me to get really good at doing guys’ hair and makeup and stuff because I’ll have to do it on screen.”

  


Light makes a face at this, but before he could respond, L says distractedly, “He spent thirty-six minutes in the bathroom today getting his hair to look like that. I doubt you could convince him to let you mess with it.”

  


Light looks a little irritated at L’s exposure of his private grooming habits but nods, “I’m kind of particular about my hairstyle.” Off to the side, L mumbles something that sounds like “kind of?”

  


Misa heaves a melodramatic sigh to hide a bubble of disappointment.

  


She is just about to turn around and leave when L looks up from his sugar-castle and casually says, “you can practice on me if you want. My hair isn’t as nice as Light’s but I’m still a guy.”

  


Misa perks up but rolls her eyes, not able to help herself, “I  _ know _ you’re a guy. But thank you Ryuzaki! That would be great.”

  


She skips over to stand behind him which has the additional benefit of putting Light directly in her line of vision. For a moment she’s still. He really is handsome. It’s like looking at a sunset over a watery horizon. It’s a beauty that has to be held in and then let go. The Kantian sublime, she thinks distantly. Some boundless, formless thing she can’t behold for too long. Misa quickly shakes herself out of it and drops all her supplies on the side table behind her. She digs her hands into L's hair to get a sense of what she’s dealing with and gasps, “Ryuzaki! Your hair is so silky! It doesn’t look very soft but it  _ is _ !”

  


L dryly replies to that with a “thank you, I grew it myself.”

  


“What kind of conditioner do you use?” If nothing else, Misa will get some good hair-care tips today.

  


“I don’t use conditioner. Maybe it’s all the cake I eat.”

  


“Wow, it’s hard to get hair to be like this without conditioner. You’ve got to show me the shampoos you use. Or maybe it’s the temperature of the water? Or the kind of water? Sometimes hard water or soft water matters. Does this building use filtered water?”

  


“I’ll get a copy of the water quality report and my toiletries receipt and send it to you.” It sounds sarcastic but by now Misa knows L well enough. Tomorrow morning she will find both items in a dramatic manila envelope on her living room table. 

  


“Okay thanks!”

  


It’s almost imperceptible but L arches a bit into her hands. His sugar castle has definitely gotten stalled.

  


Misa continues running her fingers through his hair, gently scritching at his scalp. The tension that was visible in the lines of his shoulders have eased a bit. He looks boneless. If he was a cat, Misa thinks, he would be purring.

  


She giggles a little, fascinated that the world-famous detective loves a good petting like anyone else.

  


“Okay, Ryuzaki, I’m going to put three big braids in in the front so that all the hair is out of your eyes.”

  


He grunts, clearly not paying attention to her words and just basking in her nimble ministrations.

  


A companionable silence descends as she works. She occasionally takes out and redoes a braid if she thinks it’s crooked or too messy. A while later, she steps back, satisfied. The little pink bows that are tied at the end of the braids are  _ so cute _ .

  


“Ok! I’m done, look!” She whips out a handheld mirror in front of L’s face and tilts it at different angles so he can see the whole picture. He raises an eyebrow at the bows and comments, “who knew I would look so good in pink?”

  


Light looks up at this and immediately starts laughing.

  


L raises an eyebrow, “You got something to say?”

  


“Nope. No. I support you getting in touch with your feminine side.” Light’s grin does not waver in the least, “please tell me you’ll give him some guyliner next. Maybe even some blush. His pasty ass needs some color.”

  


Misa leans forward and grasps L’s chin in her hand and turns him a bit so she can lean into his face, inspecting her canvas, all business from a mere two inches away. “Hmm… your eyes are really striking but Light’s right, you need some color. ...and some concealer... You have nice eyelashes though so we might be able to skip the guyliner.”

  


She didn’t know L could blush, but there was a faint tinge on his cheeks, “Looking forward to my teenage girl makeover.”

  


Misa lets go of his chin and turns around to get her makeup supplies out. “Hey I’m about to turn twenty. I’m basically not a teen.”

  


“My apologies,” L murmurs.

  


“How old are you anyway?” She faced him again with hands on hips. Misa had never actually wondered. He acted and looked so young but he had to be out of school already since he’d been working for a while.

  


“Twenty-five.”

  


“Ew! That’s so old.” Misa makes a face at him and he grins at her. “So,” she teases him, “what kind of self-respecting twenty-five year old reads  _ Eighteen _ ?”

  


"What, now your fans have to meet age requirements?" 

  


"Oh, is that right? You only read  _ Eighteen _ for me?" She arches her eyebrow.

  


"It behooves me to keep up with the youth, but I contain multitudes, I can have multiple reasons to do something.” 

  


“And is one of those reasons you being a pervert?”

  


“You just go on and keep calling me that, I’ll take it as a Misa-specific term of endearment."

  


“Get a room,” mutters Light, "he was only reading  _ Eighteen _ to get background info on you since he thought you were the second Kira."

  


Misa addresses the most salient part of that response, “Light, you thought we were flirting?? Gross!”

  


“Calm down,” says L “no need for jealousy, Light.”

  


Misa blusters around, not deigning that with a response. Sure, if she didn't know better, she'd think L was flirting but she did know better, so in an unnecessarily loud voice she says, “OKAY first I’m going to wipe your face down, like so. Then I’m going to apply moisturizer and a primer. And then I’ll apply the concealer to those bags of yours, and we’ll match it to be a peachy color just a shade or two lighter than your skin, which if I can find in my bag would be really nice...”

  


She trails off, deeply focused on the task at hand.

  


Doing makeup has always been relaxing for Misa. It’s like putting on armor, and the regimented steps have the lovely rigidity of routine to them. And even though she’d never done someone else’s makeup before, soon she’s in that same headspace. She has never been this close to L’s face, and she only now realizes that his eyes aren’t black but a very deep blue-gray. He has the disadvantage of constantly being compared to Light, chained together as they are, but in his own right L is...kind of good-looking, in an extreme and somewhat delicate way. 

  


As she putters around, going through each step, L’s eyes track her face. She’s noticed that he does this quite a bit. In a normal situation when he’s not entrenched in a task or thinking hard about one thing or another, he tends to look at her ever since that fateful, “I could actually fall for you.” Misa is used to male attention (and some female attention) of the romantic longing variety, but coming from L it’s a little disturbing? Electrifying? She feels something, she’s just not sure what yet. And anyway, he doesn’t act on it so she takes the coward’s way out and pretends she doesn’t notice anything.

  


“If girls take this long doing makeup, no wonder they’re always late,” Light commented.

  


“Annnnd that’s sexist.” Well, Misa is mostly sure. She has been meaning to read up more on feminist theory but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. “Anyway, I’m finished! Look!”

  


She spins L around to face Light.

  


A pause and then, “Wow. Uh, that’s not bad.”

  


L picks up the discarded hand mirror on the table.

  


“Now  _ I _ could be on an  _ Eighteen _ magazine page. Wait no, shoot high, I could be on the cover.”

  


Misa privately agrees. She turns him around to face her again and takes in the full effect. An L that got enough sleep and maybe got some sun on occasion, and did something with his hair could  _ get  _ it.

  


“I knew I would be a natural. I think that’s all the practice I need. When you want to take it off, Ryuzaki, just use these, okay?” Misa hands him a few pre-packaged wipes.

  


“Mm. Thanks.”

  


He leaves them on his notebook and turns his attention back to his neglected sugar-castle. Misa skips out of the room, excited to call her director and tell him they’re ready to shoot her stylist scenes.

**Author's Note:**

> listen, listen, Misa was WRONGED by the death note writers ok i will not take criticism thank  
> she deserved more and so did L and i refuse to believe Misa wasn’t as deep as still waters  
> also i will never be not soft for “I could actually fall for you.”  
> L’s also her friend i dont think she’d about face and kill him like that
> 
> Misa calls L Ryuzaki but the narrative (even tho it's third person limited or whatever) calls him L
> 
> Bastardization of the timeline and of the anime plot details! I haven't actually watched the anime in a while you were warned don't get mad at me
> 
> Title is from a Rilke quote


End file.
